


Sentinel vol 4: Reconstruction

by Senza_pieta



Category: Avengers (Comics), Avengers Academy, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Sentinel (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Avengers Arena never happened, Body Modification, F/F, F/M, Gay Robots, M/M, Major Character Injury, minor character appreciation, not sure if gay or just emotionally codependent, picking up where the sentinel miniseries and avengers academy left off, possibly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senza_pieta/pseuds/Senza_pieta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from AvX events, starting with the ending of Avengers Academy and disregarding Avengers Arena. </p><p>Instead of being stunned, Juston Seyfert gets badly injured in the battle to protect his Sentinel from the Phoenix-powered Emma Frost during the latter's siege on Avengers Academy. Emma, shaken by her near-mistake and wanting to make amends to the students, reluctantly agrees to compromise on the matter of Juston's Sentinel: instead of destroying the robot completely, she merely dismantles its body, allowing Hank Pym to upload its central processing unit into a new (and weaponless) android shell. </p><p>Juston wakes up in the hospital and is stunned to find that his best friend has been transformed from a hulking mecha to a humanoid robot. Compounding this drastic change in his life, he discovers that Avengers Academy is closing its doors permanently to students, leaving him to figure out what comes next. Circumstances seem ideal for Juston and his new-bodied Sentinel to finally return home to Juston's family, but between the weight of past events, and new, unexpected developments in the Sentinel's evolving AI, Juston's immediate future might not be as straightforward as he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentinel vol 4: Reconstruction

It all happened so fast.

One second Juston was struggling to free himself from Giant-Man's grip, yelling and shoving with all his strength against the enormous hand that held his legs bound while the Phoenix-powered Emma Frost descended upon his Sentinel with glowing eyes and fire in her hands.

The next minute, Juston's classmates had rallied. Out of the corner of his eye he saw X-23 landing gracefully from the air to the torn earth, with Emma Frost's blood on her claws, but his mind was already miles ahead. He ran to his hulking robotic friend at a sprint so he could frantically assess the damage the Sentinel had taken, climbed atop the splintered metal chassis to reassure himself that his best friend was still alive, at least for a few moments more.

There was no thought to what followed: at that point Juston was running purely on instinct and emotion. He yelled for the Sentinel to open the cockpit so he could clamber on inside, his thoughts racing at lightning-speed to diagnose what repairs needed the most attention in the least amount of time, if the robot was to survive another blast from Emma. There was no room in Juston's mind for doubt or thoughts of creeping futility.

Later on, for the life of him Juston would never remember whose idea it had been to charge Frost prematurely, his or the Sentinel's. All he could remember from the moments before was a gutted sense of horror, watching as the impossibly powerful mutant held his classmates suspended in midair with telekinesis using only the barest turn of her outstretched hand.

Then, he and the Sentinel were flying at her in a rage, energy-blasters set to fire—and only when Emma raised both hands above her head and _exploded_ the world into yellow heat around them did Juston realize he was sentencing himself to death.

By then, it didn't matter. In a way it was almost a relief, because he knew his Sentinel would have done the same for him. He knew it even as the metal of the cockpit folded in around him under the force of the blast, crushing his body inside. Acceptance gave way to mindless panic when the pressure increased, however, and seconds later screams upon screams of pain were tearing themselves from his throat, struggling to make himself black out if only to escape the agony of his skeleton ripping apart.

Somehow, in the midst of it all, Juston had an epiphany that the pain meant he _hadn't_ died quickly, or mercifully. He was suffering still because his Sentinel had done its best to implode in such a way that Juston wouldn't be killed in the cockpit for as long as possible, preserving the last pockets of space by inches around the hull. In Juston's agony, he had a hard time mustering any gratitude for this act of terrible salvation on the part of the machine, but he did his best to try anyway. Preserving those last few precious seconds of Juston's life couldn't have been easy.

Then, all thoughts flew from Juston's mind when the remaining oxygen was ripped forcibly from his lungs by another tearing impact. The stifling darkness of metal that was crushing him within the Sentinel's cage of a body evaporated, transforming into searing fire and whiteness, and a pain like ripping knives all over that would surely end in his death.

Then, nothing.


End file.
